December 5, 2011

Eye On New York: On The ‘Battle For Brooklyn’

CBS New York

“Battle for Brooklyn” tells the story about how one man and how his small Brooklyn community fought to save their homes and neighborhood from being taken over by one of the largest development plans in New York City history.

It took Brooklyn filmmaker Suki Hawley and her co-director Michael Galinsky eight years to make the documentary, and now it’s done.

In this segment of Eye on New York, CBS 2’s Dana Tyler talks with Hawley about the long community battle and how the film came together.

Well, the fight involved much more than "his small Brooklyn community." Nor were there "several dozen lawsuits," as interviewer Dana Tyler suggested. Nor was Tyler's closing observation that "We do know Jay-Z very much behind this" explored.

For those new to the documentary, co-director Suki Hawley gave a reasonable summary of the project's history and goals. For those of us not new to it, the initial scene broadcast still has power.

"The project that was approved in 2006 no longer exists," asserts protagonist Daniel Goldstein. The excerpt does not explain that he was speaking at a May 2009 state Senate oversight hearing, a prelude to a revision of the project to be approved by the Empire State Development Corporation.

Goldstein was correct then. And, it could be said now that "The project that was approved in 2009 no longer exists," since developer Bruce Ratner last month said, astoundingly, that a project with high-rise affordable housing built by union labor was never viable.